Men seemed to him like puppets, landscapes like paintings on glass. He longed for forests; his dreams became disordered.
From Genoa he wandered on foot through Lombardy and across the Alps. He slept on hard beds in order to keep his hot blood in check, and lived on bread and cheese. His attacks of weakness, sometimes of complete exhaustion, did not worry him at first; he paid no attention to them. But in Augsburg he swooned, falling headlong on the street. He was taken to a hospital, where he lay for three months with typhus. From his window he could see the tall chimneys of factories and an endless procession of wandering clouds. It had become winter; the ground was covered with snow.
Two years after his last visit he again entered the house on Ægydius Place. When Philippina saw him, so pale and emaciated, she uttered a cry of horror.
Agnes had grown still taller, thinner, and more serious. At times when she looked at her father he felt like crying out to her in anger: “What do you mean by your everlasting questions?” But he never said a word of this kind to her.
When Philippina saw that Daniel had returned as lonesome and uncommunicative as he was when he went away, she took it upon herself to display a great deal of gentleness, kindness, sympathy in his presence. Old Jordan was living the same life he had been living for years. Everything in fact was just the same; it seemed that the household was run according to a prescribed routine. It seemed as if Daniel had been away, not six years, but six days.
He did not feel strong yet, but he worked day and night. The fourth movement of the symphony gave promise of being a miracle of polyphony. Daniel felt primeval existence, the original of all longing, the basic grief of the world urging and pulsing in him, and this he was translating into the symphony. The eternal wanderer had arrived at the gates of Heaven and was not admitted. Supernal harmonies had borne him aloft. Muffled drum beats symbolised his beseeching raps on closed doors. Within resounded the terrible “no” of the trumpets. The pleading of the violins was in vain; in vain the intercession of the one angel standing at the right, leaning on a harp without strings; in vain the melodious chants of the other angel at the left, crowned with flowers and all together lovely; in vain the elfin chorus of the upper voices, in vain the foaming lament of the voices below. No path here for him, and no space!
One evening Daniel noticed a strange girl at his window. She was beautiful. Struck by her charms, he got up to go to her. She had vanished. It was an hallucination. He became afraid of himself, left the house, and wandered through the streets as in days of long ago.
XI
It was Carnival Week, and the people had resumed their wonted gaiety. Masked boys and girls paraded the streets, making merry wherever they went.